Life As an Afterschool Special

Stability.

We all long for it.

A place to call home. Somewhere we belong. Someone we know will be there for us regardless of the circumstance.

I have longed for stability all my life, but change has always been a part of my vocabulary.

I have moved 25 times in 26 years. I went to nine schools by the time I was in highschool.

I know how to start over, how to move on, how to reinvent myself. I know how not look back, not question and not doubt, how to ease the pain and lonliness by forgetting, and how to just go with life.

but the past year I have wanted more.

Oh how I have wanted more.

and stability always seemed just out of reach.

I was engaged to a man I thought could bring me stability. But he couldnt. He couldnt fill the space in my heart, and as much as I think he wanted to, he could not love me or make me feel loved or stable. But I stayed with him anyways. Despite the cost, and the tears and the pain, I stayed with him. Because I wanted stability more then I wanted happiness.

But this year I finally let go

I found a church with people who wanted to love me and help me and encourage me. I thought, surely this will bring me stability. ANd when things happened I didnt agree with I stayed anyways. Because I would rather have stability then growth.

But this year I finally let go.

And there have been other things.

I have watch death come and destroy dreams and hopes in the past month. I have moved, I lost my car, and just last week I was laid off my job I have had more then a year.

and so stability seemed elusive still.

and yet something is diffrent. Because I am realizing that sometimes you have to choice what is best, and healthiest, and safest, even if you think that will mean losing the foundations of your stability.

I have begun to realize that it was the very foundations that I was wrong about. I had put my all my hope and my trust in things in this world. I had begun to believe that stability came from man, or marriage, or people, or places or things. And that simply isnt true.

Stability doesnt come from circumstance or surrondings.

It comes from an unwavering peace that the price, and the conditions, and the circumstance of my life can not change.

It comes from knowing that God is in control, and that he works all things together for the good.

It comes from knowing that even when I feel weak I can do all things through Him.

I am learnng that I will stay strong. I will remain the same because God remains the same. I will take the good and the bad, I will take the blessings and the challenges, and I face them both head on.

And it doesnt matter where I work or where I live or who I am with.

I feel like like the scarecrow at the end of wizard of Oz. Because I am learning that I what I was searhing so hard to find already was buried deep within me already. Its not elusive at all. I have stability. I dont have to search it out. I only have to live it out. one step, one moment, one circumstance at a time.